Traditional Uzbek Taskhkent Wedding Dance
Marvarid Uzbek Dance Group performs Traditional Uzbek Taskhkent wedding dance at the Brighton Beach Public Library
Brighton Beach houses many remarkable Central Asian traditional artists, including the Marvarid Uzbek Dance Group. Marvarid Uzbek Dance Group (founded by Lauren Propenko) was created in 2018 to shares traditional Uzbek dance throughout New York City and New Jersey, particularly weddings and birthday parties. They rehearse at the iDance studio, above the Masters Theater on Brighton Beach Avenue. At that moment only idance Studio has professional dancers originally from Tashkent (Uzbekistan) that preserve these traditions.
All the movements in Uzbek dances have meaning. For example, we often say in Uzbek dance “even the face has to dance.” The expression, the eyes. Even the movement between the eyes and eyebrows have meaning. An example of this is the movement of the hand across the face we are describing and sharing the beautiful eyes and the beauty of the women. Usually, Uzbek women have very thick eyebrows. This is what defines them as an Uzbek. There are also similar components of the wedding dance across Arabic and Central Asian dance. For example, all three of these dance traditions share different dances at the beginning of a wedding at the “procession” and also at pre-wedding dances where male relatives and friends will parade through the streets en route to the bride’s house, accompanied by musicians and doira drummers. - Svetlana Seryogina
